Moral choices

Posted on July 10, 2007
Filed Under Science | Leave a Comment

On the Neuroscience front, Scientific American reports that damage to the vetromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPC), a region of the brain that deals with emotional responses may make serious moral choices easier.

Researchers confronted volunteers with moral scenarios and found that those with VMPC injure were three times more likely than healthy people to advocate throwing the person to certain death in front of a train for the good of the many, i.e, the action saves the life of five other people. In a similar scenario, VMPC patients were five times more likely to advocate smothering one’s baby to save others. Senior author Antonio Damasio of the University of Southern California says that the patients are not amoral but seem to lack the natural conflict between emotion and reason. The study also shows that such decisions result not from a single moral faculty but from two different processes that can compete with each other.

In other words, if push comes to shove and we need someone with authority to make such a moral decision but at a larger scale, i.e., kill thousands to save millions, let us hope that this person suffers from VMPC because it will make it easier for him/her to make the right moral choice.

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